The pieces of the garage expansion have been assembled and finishing work is underway. You can see lights being installed on the top floor and stone work being added to the exterior columns.

Parking Deck Progress

The expansion of the parking garage is proceeding on schedule. The exterior construction is complete and the large crane that delicately placed each of the prefabricated building blocks into place has been disassembled and removed from the campus.

The next phase of construction will be taking place on the interior of the structure. Construction crews will be placing filler cement, running electrical conduits, installing the sprinkler system and finishing the interior walls. The interior work will take months to complete, but if the weather cooperates, the deck will be finished on time.

Park Avenue Landscaping to Begin

Weather permitting, FMH will begin landscaping the area on the Park Avenue side of the garage in mid-September, in accordance with the plans approved by the City of Frederick. The landscaping will include some decorative lighting and a sitting area.

Hospital Requests Expansion of Shuttle Program

As we watch the steady progress of our parking deck expansion, we’re also looking at ways we can keep those parking spaces open for our patients and visitors. We’ve been operating an employee shuttle program for a couple of years now and we’d like to add another remote parking location to the mix.

The hospital hopes to establish an additional employee shuttle route to the parking lot at our Materials Distribution Center.

Existing city code requires that the off-site employee shuttle parking be within a certain distance from the main campus. The hospital has proposed a code amendment to the city to increase the permitted distance so we can shuttle our employees to the hospital-owned land where the hospital’s Materials Distribution Center (MDC) building now stands. The route between the hospital and the MDC that the shuttle bus service would follow will direct the buses east down Seventh Street and away from our adjacent neighborhoods.

Since the shuttle is exclusively for employees, it will help reduce peak hour traffic at FMH and the neighborhood. We view this as a significant positive for both FMH and our neighbors. Together, we need to do all that we can to keep traffic off of our neighborhood streets and to keep curbside parking to a minimum.

Our pledge is to keep you informed. You can track our construction progress through our Flickr Photostream. As always, if you have feedback for us, please feel free to leave a comment right here on our blog, reach out to us on Facebook, or talk to us on Twitter.